No product in the history of mobile technology has garnered as much hype or fanfare as Apple’s iPod-in-a-phone, the aptly named iPhone. With an initial selling point of $600, naysayers predicted a failure because it was simply too expensive to have a widespread appeal. Clearly, that was not the case. Even with the prohibitive price, the iPhone was an undisputed commercial success and drove Apple’s stock straight up. Fast forward a few months, Apple drops the price of its overwhelmingly popular 8gb model to $400 and begins phasing its less popular (and less available) 4gb model out. After issuing a $100 credit of questionable intent to pre-reduction buyers, the “unreasonable” moniker assigned to the iPhones price suddenly becomes more realistic. And now, in January 2008, the iPhone is one of the most popular phones in the world.

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Hardware: The iPhone is revolutionary not only because of its unique implementation of multi-touch technology, but because Apple managed to cram a huge screen, 8gb of memory, a camera, web browsing power and a touch screen keyboard into one of the slimmest phones on the market. Apple veers off from the traditional full-chrome backside and instead goes for a more conservative and less scratch-prone matte aluminum finish. For the front, they surround the glass panel in a thin rim of chrome and accent the phone with glossy black. All in all, it’s a marvel to look at.

The lack of a 3g modem is a problem and one of the very few things I regret about moving from my old (3g) pda phone to the iPhone. Apple has excuses for why its not feasible, but I would gladly sacrifice much of my battery life for current-generation browsing speed. 3g is pretty much the only advantage Cingular/AT&T has over its GSM competitors and I was sad to see Apple not taking advantage of this. However, I knew what I was buying and purchased it anyways.
The headphone jack is a huge oversight and a real design flaw. Placed right on the beginning of the corner’s rounded edge, it is too deep for most aftermarket headphones! Without an adapter, the iPhone has alienated many of its buyers (who already own expensive, third party headphones). I was one of these people. Neither of my headphones (Sennheiser HD595 cans and Shure SE210 IEMs) would fit the iPhone. Admittedly, the usual suspects in the Apple accessory market (Griffin, Belkin and others) were quick to produce an adapter that allowed other headphones to circumvent the restrictive recessed jack, but this is one of those things that should have never made it past in-house testing.

Small flaws aside, its well built and amazingly strong. The glass is as scratch proof as they advertised it to be and I have no hesitation putting it in my pockets without any sort of case. I do have a screen protector placed on the front, but that is merely out of my own squeamish obsession with perfection. The camera is what cell phone cameras should be – it’s not perfect, and certainly not a replacement for a full featured digital camera, but it is good enough for snapshots and quick pictures with friends. I found the camera to be substantially better then my previous phone, the HTC Hermes (Cingular 8525).

Activation: Apple changed the way people activate cell phones forever when it set the iPhone to be activated on your home computer, through the bundled iTunes software, rather then at a cell phone store. This is the future of mobile products and I found it very well executed. As a launch day purchaser, I was one of the hundreds of thousands trying to activate their phones at the same time. I encountered some long waits, but was eventually successful on my first try.

Software: The software is where the iPhone breaks away from the crowd. Multi touch is nothing new (the HTC Touch versions 1 and 2 also attempt to do what the iPhone has done, but rely on the very limited Windows Mobile platform) but Apple’s software enables it to be pleasant and amazingly intuitive. Cover flow, however, is annoying. Every time I turn my iPhone on its side, cover flow springs into action. I am not a fan of it, and while the eye-candy is very nice; I find it less functional then the text piece. If there was an option to disable the in-iPod-mode cover flow, I would.

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Email: Email is straightforward and fairly basic. There is no push support, which is a large turnoff for business users and anyone who relies on mission critical email. For the average Joe, this is no big deal. Email can come in every half an hour and that is frequently enough for most people. The actual email display is very good and graphics come through well.

3rd party software: As with any popular device, people are always looking to get the most out of their new top. However, the iPhone is a cut above most “popular” devices; with enormous communities dedicated to opening its capabilities up sprung up across the Internet and the world.

Conclusion: For “Crackberry” junkies, the iPhone might not be the perfect fit because it lacks a true push email solution. However, for almost everyone else, it is an excellent option. Highly recommended!